Category: Cooking With Shan

You can’t have Christmas without Mince Pies. This recipe always goes down well with my family, at the Christmas party and as a festive snack during December. I am not yet ambitious enough to make my own mincemeat, though. Maybe next year? Here is my recipe for Mince Pies.

You’ll Need;

225g Flour

50g Icing Sugar( more if you want to dust with icing sugar).

125g Butter

1 Egg

2 Tbsp Milk

4 Tbsp Mincemeat

½ Teaspoon Cinnamon

Pinch of Salt

*If you are making your own pastry, do that first. If you are using store bought pastry, you need to get it out the fridge 20 minutes in advance or 24 hours in advance if it is frozen.*

Method;

To make your pastry, use a sieve and put your flour, icing sugar and cinnamon through it, onto a clean, dry surface. You need to then add the butter in cubes and use your fingers to bring the butter and dry ingredients together, they should look like a crumble mixture. After you have done this, make a well in the centre of your ‘crumble’ mixture and add the egg and milk. Combine the mixture until you have a dough, try not to knead the dough too much. Place in the fridge, in clingfilm for 30-40 minutes.

Take ⅔ of the dough and place the other ⅓ to the side of now. Roll out the ⅔ of pastry on a floured surface until the dough it about the thickness of a 10p coin. Use a circle cookie cutter to cut out 12 circles. Dust the fairy cake tray with flour and add the circles of pastry into each hole. Use your finger to neaten up the edges of the pastry, then use a fork to pierce a hole in the bottom of each pastry circle.

Fill each pastry circle with a teaspoon of mincemeat (homemade or store bought).

Now, get the ⅓ pastry you had left over. Roll out the pastry the same way you did in step 2. You can use a star cookie cutter or the a circle one for this, depending on your preference. Cut out 12 stars ( I made 12 medium stars and 12 small stars and places the small stars on top of the medium stars for a prettier look).

Place the stars on top of your mince pies and use an egg wash over the top of the mince pies, to make the mince pies golden brown and crispy, once cooked.

Cook at gas mark 6 for 25-35 minutes, until the mince pies are golden brown. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Nutella Cheesecakes are possibly my favourite dessert to have. The creamy and smooth Nutella cheesecakes are great as a sneaky treat, an indulgent party dessert or an after meal pudding. Whenever and whatever you make these Nutella cheesecakes for, you won’t regret it. And with the Christmas holiday now upon us, there is so many more reasons to make these, whether it’s for that Christmas party or as a treat for the children on Christmas eve/day. This recipe makes ten individual cheesecakes or one massive cheesecake.

You will need:

100g Icing Sugar

150g Butter

300g Nutella

400g Soft Cheese

200g Digestive Biscuits

Mini Loaf/Cake Bakeable Cases (10) or a removable cake tin. ( any cake case will do, but cardboard cases are best as they can hold themselves up.

Rating – ⅘

Price(per serving) – £1.10 Price(for all ingredients) – £11

Method:-

Measure all ingredients. Crumble up the digestives with either the end of a rolling pin or use a food processor. Melt the butter in a saucepan or in the microwave and pour over the digestives, the digestives should resemble sand and not have any large pieces in the mix. Mix these 2 ingredients together until they are combined. Spoon the digestive mixture evenly into the loaf/cake cases. Place on a baking tray ( to keep them together and put in the fridge, so the butter can harden.

In a clean, large bowl, mix together all the soft cheese and icing sugar until, all the icing sugar is incorporated and the mix is smooth. Add the Nutella, and use a whisk or spatula to whisk the Nutella into the soft cheese and icing sugar mixture. You can add more icing sugar or even cocoa powder to thicken the mixture if you want to.

Spoon the Nutella mixture into the cake cases on top of the digestive mixture. Smooth out the top of each cheesecake and put back in the fridge. Leave in the fridge to set for at least 6 hours.

ENJOY!!

*I recommend leaving the cheesecakes to set for 12-18 hours if making the individuals and 15-20 hours if you make the large cheesecake.*

These cheesecakes need to be kept in the fridge and eaten within 48 hours of making them. *disclaimer – all images used are owned by me*

It’s just turned fall and the start to my favourite time of the year, you can expect a lot of blog posts these next couple months. Most will be seasonal, with Halloween and bonfire night fast approaching, you can expect lots of recipe idea’s and seasonal posts. I love this time of year, including all the fun things that happen this time of year, so I will have lots of posts up, including baking/recipe posts, fall and winter makeup and hair ideas and DIY and decor posts. Today, I have one last summary post up for you all, a recipe. You can make these any time of the year but I like to make these ones around summer, but you can adjust these to any time of the year. Instead of making flowers and hearts, you could make cats and ghosts for Halloween, fireworks and bonfires for bonfire night or stars, trees and Santas for Christmas, all you need to change is the shapes and the icing colors.

With this recipe I made around 25-30 cookies(depending on how big your cookies are), so you could double this recipe or half it, depending on how many you want to make.

Sugar Cookie Recipe:

280g Caster Sugar

600g Plain Flour

400g Butter

A pinch of salt

1 Teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 eggs ( beat the egg whites for one minute, you do not want white peaks, just a foamy appearance)

2 teaspoons of cinnamon( if you would like it, you could switch it out with nutmeg or more vanilla, or have nothing extra).

400g Icing Sugar

3-6 tablespoons of water or milk.

Other things you will need:

Cookie Cutters

Baking Tray

Bowl

Scale

Spatula or Spoon

Greaseproof paper

Piping Bags or Zip Lock Bags

Food Colouring ( I used red and yellow)

Firstly, you need to weigh all your ingredients and preheat the oven to gas mark 5.

You then need to cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl, add the egg yolk and partially beaten egg whites to the mixture, use a spatula to mix together.

Add the salt, cinnamon and vanilla and continue mixing. Add the flour in 3 parts and mix until well combined. At this point you mix will have turned into a soft dough.

Wrap in cling film and place in fridge, for 30 minutes or freezer for 10 minutes, as long as the soft dough has become slightly firm, then you’re ready to take it out of the fridge.

Place on a floured surface and roll out to about a 1 cm in height. Cut out the shapes you would like and place onto a well-greased baking tray.

Bake in the oven for around 15-20 minutes, until hard on top and lightly brown. Place on a baking rack and leave to cool for 30 minutes.

To make the icing, simply sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add 1 tablespoon of water at a time until you have a paste, the paste shouldn’t be runny, but it should not be too thick that it doesn’t fall off the spoon if held up. You are looking for icing, that will easily pipe onto a cookie without running off the sides, but not leave a pattern like butter icing would on a cake.

Use food colouring to make different colors for the different cookies and use a piping bag to pipe the icing onto the cookie. Start off at the sides of the cookie and work your way in.

Leave the icing on the cookies to harden, in the fridge for around 30-45 minutes before you serve them, this makes them less messy to eat as the icing on top will start to harden.

I would suggest eating within 4 days. Keep them in a cool area in an airtight container. These are great to make at any time of the year, but I love making them around holidays, because they can be themed, for a party or occasion. You could make these with children because they are so easy and quick to make.

So this week I decided to do a little cooking. I love cooking and coming up with new things and I’d never tried to make Rainbow cupcakes. So I decided to, I put a recipe together and they turnt out amazing! They are so Fun ,Easy and Quick to make. So I thought i’d share my recipe and method with you all. I hope you enjoy making them and eating them as much as I did 🙂

1. Cream together the butter and sugar in the large bowl. In the median bowl place the egg whites and place the egg yolks in a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, leave to one side.

2. In the large bowl, sieve in the flour and baking powder into the creamed butter, add the egg whites and yolk and continue to whisk into smooth batter.

3, Separate the cake batter into 4 small bowls . Add the food colouring to each. E.G Red to one batter, Blue to another and so on. Mix each colour in till you have a Blue, Red , Purple and Green cake batter.

4. Place muffin cases into muffin tin. Starting with the red add a teaspoon to the bottom of the cake case, smooth out and then add the Green on top, smooth out and repeat with all colours. The batter should only come half way up the muffin tin otherwise it will spill over while cooking in the oven. Use a toothpick to swirl each the cupcakes a little.

5. Place in the oven for around 20 minutes. You will know when they are done when they are light brown op, spring back when touched and when pierced toothpick should come out clean.

6. After they are cooked. place into a cooling rack. I just used a basic buttercream to decorate my rainbow cupcakes.

Store in a air tight container for 5 Days.

I hope you try out these rainbow cupcakes. Show me your recreations with the Hashtag #Lifeasshanrecipes on instragrams and twitter! My username for instragram and twitter is @lifeasshanx